GLBT chairman's toll road plan 'mystified' official

The man behind a plan to build a privately funded toll road from Grundy County, Ill., to Michigan City has said he's talked to state transportation planners and legislators, but the proposal remains a mystery — and far-fetched — to them, officials said.

Frank Patton, chairman of Great Lakes Basin Transportation, said he wants his $4 billion Daniel Burnham Expressway to extend 125 miles with 18 or so intersections at major highways. It would follow much of the route of another of his plans — a tri-state, privately funded freight train line — and then follow the long-stalled Illiana toll road in Lake County and part of Illinois. The objective, Patton has said, is to create a 2,000-foot transportation corridor that would get trucks off local highways.

He expects the expressway proposal to go through a review process by the Illinois and Indiana state transportation departments that would include public hearings, and said he will have a more specific map in the next two to three months.

But representatives from the Indiana Department of Transportation, the Northwest Indiana Regional Planning Commission, and State Rep. Ed Soliday- R-Valparaiso, said they were unfamiliar with the plan, first reported in the Post-Tribune, and questioned whether the toll road was even feasible, given recent changes in the state's eminent domain laws and the process by which new roads are created.

"We'd have to have a conversation about what it would involve. It would have to be further along to know how we're involved," said Will Wingfield, who handles media relations for INDOT. Federal agencies might have to be involved if the planned road touched on environmentally sensitive or historic areas, he added.

"While we build roads, for sure, we're using public funding and the process for acquiring the funds and the rules are totally different," Wingfield said.

Soliday, chair of the House transportation committee, said none of the legislators he knows from this area are familiar with the plan or would support it.

"First of all, I don't see where we would have any interest in it," he said. "Second of all, I don't see how he gets the land."

Soliday spearheaded legislation recently signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb that updates eminent domain laws, which was done in response to Patton's plans for the freight train line that would cut through southern Lake and Porter counties.

"A private entity cannot enact eminent domain," said Mitch Barloga, transportation planning manager for NIRPC, adding his agency was unaware of the proposal. There's a set process for how new roads are built in the state, he said, and that entails "a lot of complexities," including getting in NIRPC's Transportation Improvement Program.

There has to be a study to determine what the impact would be on air quality, and another study termed "environmental justice" to make sure the project wouldn't negatively impact minority populations or contribute to urban sprawl.

"They would still have to get into our long-range transportation plan," Barloga said, adding Patton's plan is "extremely unique," and the only thing in the region that comes even close is the privately funded Cline Avenue Bridge in Lake County.

Soliday, who was a proponent of the Illiana toll road, said that was a public/private partnership in which the state would have owned the land and leased its use.

With the traffic to the east of Interstate 65 dropping off rapidly, there's no need for the toll road Patton's proposing there, he said, and "the toll would have to be 25 bucks" for the road to be financially feasible.

"If we wanted to build the Illiana to the border (with Illinois), we could get it funded tomorrow," Soliday said.

He couldn't see why he would create legislation that would give Patton authority to create any road outside of INDOT, and he doesn't know any legislators who have endorsed the toll road or the freight train line, he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 07, 2017, in the News section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "Indiana officials ‘mystified' by exec's toll road plan - Businessman is pushing idea for freight corridor" —
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